Splash! Or, An Exercise in Single-Sentence Paragraphs.

I have become convinced that there are many more things in the world that need to be avoided than there are things that ought to be pursued, and meanwhile, it can become easy to get so wrapped up in avoiding things that there is nothing left to do, in which case one finds oneself doing nothing; nothing, that is, but reflecting, rather like a couple of mirrors sending goodness knows what information back and forth and back and forth until imperfection renders whatever reality there might have been utterly meaningless, sending sense and reason spiraling into a dark abyss of theoretical impossibility.

However, in such quandaries, one need only ponder the concrete, take a gander at the to-do list, consider the urgency of the mundane tasks that demand one's attention, and one will be safe and sound, back on the terra firma of overwhelming despair.

And once there, what ought a person do?

I find myself constantly in the midst of this internal debate, trying to find a balance between functioning and philosophizing, reprimanding myself ceaselessly for losing focus and letting the goal fall by the wayside, sometimes pausing to realize that I was never quite sure what the goal had been, other than perhaps to find out what the goal should be.

Invariably, such musings mature into anxiety which ferments into angst, which coupled with anger at the fact that my thoughts seem to yield only negative emotions beginning in a-, curdles regrettably into bitterness.

And only after having rehearsed this routine of alliterated afflictions do I finally find myself (maybe) in a position to ponder the stunning significance of the Gospel of grace.

I apologize for the previous sentence.

In all seriousness, however, I do not find myself able to arrive at any semblance of humility by any other means; that is, being shown in gruesome detail the futility of my own thinking and my abject inability to sanctify myself, which has been unendingly my temptation and a veritable millstone about my figurative neck in the freezing lake that is the planet Earth with all its allurements above which spans the metaphorical bridge of righteousness, off of which I daily hurl myself with reckless abandon.

Parsimoniously, (a word that here is used to indicate that the author spent time (almost undoubtedly too much) waffling over whether the initial word of this paragraph ought to be "fortunately" or "unfortunately," though in nearly every other context it would mean something entirely different) it is at the bottom of this freezing lake that sinners find grace, and it is through a figurative death of suffocation, hypothermia, or some combination of the two that they find themselves able to say perhaps with increasing frequency as they hurdle headlong into sin, "maybe this isn't a good idea..." and eventually even realize that God loves them.

Maybe that's the goal that fell out of my pocket several miles back.

No, surely not.

Maybe this isn't a good idea...